What Were The Infinity Stones For (Other Than Killing Half the Universe)
The Infinity Stones are best-known for helping Thanos fulfill his plans of wiping out half of life in the universe with the snap of his fingers, but the Stones were created with another purpose and can do many other things besides destroying entire races. The first three phases in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, collectively known as the Infinity Saga, introduced the heroes that would lead this connected universe and prepared everything for the arrival of Thanos and his quest for the Infinity Stones.
The Mad Titan’s plans were all about bringing balance to the universe, which to him meant destroying half of life in the universe. To achieve that, he set out to find all the Infinity Stones across the universe along with the Infinity Gauntlet, no matter who he had to kill to get them, as happened in Vormir when he sacrificed Gamora so he could take the Soul Stone with him. Thanos got what he wanted in Avengers: Infinity War, and was killed in the first minutes of Avengers: Endgame – but that wasn’t the end of him, as his past version made it to the present day, making way for the Battle of Earth. Thanks to the time heist, the surviving heroes got the Infinity Stones, and with the help of the Hulk, Thanos’ snap was reversed, but in order to defeat him and his armies, Tony Stark had to do one final snap and sacrificed himself in the process.
The Infinity Stones were returned to where the team retrieved them during the time heist, essentially balancing the main timeline even though they created many different ones in the process. However, a question remains about the Infinity Stones: what were they created for in the first place? With each Stone having its own properties and powers, they surely weren’t created with the purpose of using their combined powers to destroy races, planets, and more. Here are the history and purpose of the Infinity Stones.
The Infinity Stones are as old as the universe, and their origin has been explored on two separate occasions within the MCU: first in Guardians of the Galaxy, where The Collector told the team about the origin of the Stones, and later in Avengers: Endgame, when Wong explained their story to Bruce Banner and Tony Stark. According to them, the Big Bang sent six elemental crystals across the universe, which were formed into the Infinity Stones by the Cosmic Entities (Death, Entropy, Infinity, and Eternity), with each Stone representing a different aspect of the universe: Space (blue), Mind (yellow), Reality (red), Power (purple), Time (green), and Soul (orange).
In the comics, the origin of the Infinity Stones is similar to the one in the MCU, with the Stones coming from a primordial universe inhabited by Celestials. They were later delivered to different realities across the multiverse, with the first one to appear in the Prime Marvel Universe being the Soul Stone, given to Adam Warlock by the High Evolutionary. Back to the MCU, the first Stone to appear was the Space Stone, in Captain America: The First Avenger, and it was kept inside the Tesseract, which allowed many characters to hold the stones without dying in the process, as would happen if they held a stone in their hands.
As the Cosmic Entities and their backstories haven’t been explored in the MCU, it’s unclear what their purpose was when creating the Infinity Stones, beyond them representing the main aspects of the universe itself. However, and thanks to their individual powers, powerful beings like the Celestials have used some of the stones for destructive purposes, as shown during The Collector’s speech in Guardians of the Galaxy – for example, one of the holograms showed the Celestial Eson the Searcher using the Power Stone to destroy an entire planet, but everything comes with a price. The power of the Infinity Stones is such that most of them were put into other objects and weapons so the wielder wouldn’t suffer the normal repercussions of holding and using one of the Stones, as happened to Johan Schmidt (who was cursed to Vormir to guard the Soul Stone after touching the active Tesseract), Jane Foster when she got ill after being exposed to the Aether, and Carina, The Collector’s assistant who went against his orders and directly touched the Power Stone. The real purpose of the Stones was most likely one about true balance and power over these aspects of the universe, as the Ancient One explained in Avengers: Endgame that removing the Infinity Stones from their original locations would leave that particular timeline vulnerable as they are "the chief weapon against the forces of darkness", but such levels of power can bring out the worst side of any being, including the Celestials, and so they have been used for destructive and evil purposes.
The Infinity Gauntlet is a glove resistant enough to hold and channel the power of all the Infinity Stones, though the wielder won’t be safe from the consequences of such power – for example, Thanos’ arm was severely injured after using the Gauntlet with the Stones, as was the Hulk after reversing the snap, and Iron Man couldn’t survive his snap, even though the energy of the Stones was distributed through his new suit. The Gauntlet allowed Thanos to end with half of life in the universe with the snap of his fingers, and while this has been the only time in the MCU where the Stones have been used together, it doesn’t mean this is the only way they can be used. In the comics, Thanos was also the first to use all the Stones together, with the Elders of the Universe being the second entities to use them in unison. Through a different device, they used the power of the Stones to absorb the life energy of Galactus and transfer it to a barren planet, thus giving it life (though ultimately, that didn’t go well for the Elders).
As the MCU has changed many things from the comics to fit the format and narrative they have been building for years, if the Infinity Stones are to reappear at some point, they could be used like the Elders did in the comics but with the help of the Gauntlet, giving the glove a new purpose after all the chaos Thanos provoked in the Infinity Saga. While the MCU should take a break from the Infinity Stones after spending years building up to the moment where Thanos would use them all together, it wouldn’t hurt to use them one more time for a less destructive and more positive purpose, as the Stones are not evil nor were they created for destruction, and it all depends on the wielder.
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